10 After Effects Preferences to Change Before Your Next Project

A few minutes in Preferences can make After Effects feel less like an ancient temple full of traps and more like software you chose to use on purpose. In After Effects Insider, we cover a set of interface and preference changes that make the app easier to see, navigate, and work in every day.

Before changing anything major, back up your preferences folder. It is a boring sentence, but it is also the sentence that saves you when you accidentally turn your beloved custom workspace into dust.

With that tiny bit of wizardly caution handled, here are ten changes worth making before your next project.

1. Turn off the Home Screen

The Home Screen is useful until it is not.

If you are opening After Effects to start work, you probably do not need a giant welcome panel standing between you and your workspace. Turning it off means the app opens where you actually work.

On Mac, go to After Effects > Settings > Setup & Repair. On Windows, look under Edit > Preferences. Disable Enable Home Screen.

This is not a profound life change. You will not suddenly become faster at animating a logo. You will, however, stop doing the tiny daily ritual of closing a screen you did not ask for.

Those tiny rituals add up.

2. Disable Coach Marks

Coach Marks are the little in-app hints that point at interface features and offer advice.

They are helpful when you are new to After Effects. They are less helpful when you are trying to select a keyframe and a bright tooltip has parked itself over the timeline like it pays rent.

Go to Settings > General and uncheck Enable Coach Marks.

If you are teaching someone new to After Effects, leave them on for a while. If you already know where the Pen Tool is, reclaim your screen.

3. Make path points and handles bigger

Mask paths, shape paths, and Bezier handles are easier to work with when you can see them.

After Effects can make those controls surprisingly tiny, especially on a high-resolution display. You are trying to refine a curve, not perform microsurgery.

In Settings > General, increase Path Point and Handle Size. A setting around eight pixels is a good starting point, though you may want to go larger if you work on a big display or simply enjoy being able to find the thing you are supposed to click.

This change is especially useful if you:

- Draw and refine masks often

- Build shape-layer animation

- Work with hand-drawn paths

- Find yourself zooming in way farther than necessary just to grab a handle

Your paths will still require judgment. They will just stop hiding from you.

4. Center anchor points in new shape layers

This one saves a surprising amount of cleanup.

When you create a new shape layer, After Effects can place its anchor point somewhere that makes sense to exactly nobody. Then you have to fix it before you rotate, scale, or animate the layer.

In Settings > General, turn on Center Anchor Point in New Shape Layers.

Now, when you create a shape layer, its anchor point begins in the center of that shape.

This will not solve every anchor-point problem. Imported artwork, precomps, and layers made by someone else will still occasionally arrive with their anchor point living in another zip code. But for new shape layers, it removes one repetitive step from your workflow.

5. Mute audio when your preview is not playing in real time

You know the sound.

Your composition is trying to preview, your computer is trying its best, and the audio turns into a haunted cassette tape being played underwater.

Go to Settings > Preview and enable Mute Audio When Preview Is Not Real-Time.

Now, when After Effects cannot play a preview at the intended speed, it will not blast distorted, stuttering audio through your headphones.

This is not just a comfort setting. Bad audio preview can make timing decisions harder because you are reacting to playback problems instead of the actual rhythm of the edit.

If the preview is not real time, you need a smoother preview or a better render. You do not need jump-scare audio.

6. Show all keyframes in motion paths

After Effects can limit how much of a motion path you see at once. That is fine for a short move. It is less useful when you are trying to understand the full arc of an animation.

In Settings > Display, find the motion-path options and select All Keyframes.

You will see the complete motion path instead of a small section around the current time.

This is useful for catching problems that are easy to miss in the Graph Editor or timeline:

- A position move that takes an accidental detour

- A path that gets too close to another object

- A move that starts cleanly but loses its arc halfway through

- Keyframes you forgot existed because they live twelve seconds later

If your comp has hundreds of position keyframes, the view can get visually busy. For most animation work, though, seeing the whole route is better than trying to infer it one keyframe at a time.

7. Set up a rule-of-thirds grid

A grid will not make a weak composition good. It can make a decent composition easier to build.

In Settings > Grids & Guides, set the horizontal and vertical values for the Proportional Grid to three. When you turn on the Proportional Grid in the Composition panel, you will get a simple rule-of-thirds layout.

That gives you a fast way to check where your focal point is landing and whether your elements are crowding the center of the frame.

Use it as a guide, not a law carved into a stone tablet.

Sometimes the right answer is to place the important thing dead center. Sometimes a composition needs to feel lopsided, cramped, calm, or aggressively weird. The grid is there to help you make a choice, not make one for you.

8. Make type previews easier to read

If you spend any time adjusting fonts in After Effects, the default type preview settings can feel unnecessarily cramped.

In the Type preferences, increase the font-preview size to Medium, Large, or Extra Large. You can also reduce the number of recent fonts displayed. Eight is usually enough for a useful history without turning the font menu into a scrollable archaeological dig.

This is a small quality-of-life change, but it matters when you are auditioning type quickly.

You want to compare the character of a font, its weight, proportions, and spacing. You do not want to squint at a microscopic preview and pick the wrong one because two sans serifs looked identical at six pixels tall.

9. Increase the Expression Editor font size

Expressions are already a little intimidating when they are working.

They become much more intimidating when the text is tiny, the editor is narrow, and you are trying to figure out whether that is a semicolon or a rogue piece of lint on your monitor.

Go to Settings > Scripting & Expressions and increase the Expression Editor font size. Fourteen points is a solid baseline; go bigger if that is more comfortable.

While you are there, you may also choose to allow scripts to write files and access the network, which can help certain trusted third-party scripts work as intended.

The word there is trusted.

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Only enable permissions for scripts you got from a source you trust. A script can be useful and still have broad access, so treat it the way you would treat any download that wants permission to touch your files.

10. Change the 3D camera manipulation point to Directional Indicator

If you work in After Effects 3D, this one is worth trying.

By default, the camera manipulation point uses a crosshair indicator. It is precise, but it does not give much visual feedback while you orbit around a scene.

Go to Settings > 3D and change the camera manipulation point from Indicator to Directional Indicator.

The directional option makes it easier to understand the camera’s orientation as you move around in 3D space. That can be especially helpful when you are arranging layers in depth, setting up a 3D composition, or trying to recover after orbiting your camera one click too far and briefly losing all sense of north.

You will still need to learn how the camera tools behave. This setting just gives you a better visual cue while you do.

One bonus change: clean up your workspace menu

This one is not technically a Preference, but it is worth doing.

Open the Workspace menu, choose Edit Workspaces, and move the workspaces you never use into the overflow menu. Keep the ones you regularly switch between easy to reach.

A clean workspace menu will not make your render faster. It will make the interface feel less cluttered, which is useful when you are bouncing between Animation, Effects, Color, and a custom workspace built for the project in front of you.

You can also reset a workspace to its saved layout by double-clicking its name and choosing Reset. That is handy after switching monitors, opening another animator’s project, or somehow dragging every panel in After Effects into a shape that resembles a broken jigsaw puzzle.

Make After Effects fit the way you work

Preferences are personal. A setting that helps one animator may annoy another. If you love the Home Screen, keep it. If Coach Marks saved your sanity last week, leave them on. If you use the crosshair camera indicator every day and prefer it, trust your hands.

The point is to notice the friction you keep accepting.

After Effects is complicated enough without making yourself fight the interface over the same small things every day. Start with the settings that solve a real annoyance, save your preference backup somewhere safe, and adjust from there.

Your timeline will still have 400 layers someday. At least the mask handles will be visible.

FAQ

Where do I find Preferences in After Effects?

On Mac, open After Effects > Settings. On Windows, open Edit > Preferences. The exact wording can vary slightly by After Effects version, but the main preference categories are in the same general place.

Should I reset all After Effects preferences before starting a project?

Usually, no. Resetting preferences can help if After Effects is behaving strangely, but it also removes your customized settings, workspaces, and possibly plugin-loading choices. Back up your preferences folder before resetting anything.

Why does my After Effects audio sound distorted during preview?

After Effects may be unable to preview the composition at real-time speed. Turning on Mute Audio When Preview Is Not Real-Time prevents distorted playback, but you may still need to lower the preview resolution, clear cache space, shorten the work area, or render a preview to judge the timing accurately.

Is it safe to allow scripts to write files and access the network in After Effects?

Only enable that setting for scripts from sources you trust. Some useful tools need those permissions to function, but the permission also gives a script broader access to your computer and network. Treat unfamiliar scripts with caution.

What School of Motion course teaches After Effects setup and interface customization?

After Effects Insider covers interface settings, preference management, workspaces, and techniques for building a more personal After Effects setup.